Romney Speech Freaks Out Libs

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RUSH: To Redding, California, this is Travis. Hello, Travis.

CALLER: Yes, hello. I would just like to make a point about Mitt Romney’s speech, and the fact that necessarily, you know, doesn’t mean that he’s a good candidate for president because he wrote a good speech. You know, I figure Stephen King is a great writer, but that doesn’t make him a president, you know? And that’s basically all I wanted to say.

RUSH: You were not impressed by the speech?

CALLER: You know, I’m not impressed with the speech, necessarily.

RUSH: Who is your candidate?

CALLER: I don’t necessarily have a candidate yet. I just want to see some action and not words.

RUSH: Well, I understand what you’re saying, and like Mario Cuomo made a great speech at a convention and that’s what he’s remembered for but he never became president, and ditto for the Reverend Jackson at the San Francisco convention, made a speech that was widely heralded. This I think is a little different circumstance. The reason I liked it, as I said yesterday, it did not cherry-pick; it didn’t try to appeal to every little group out there and their pet cause. It was filled with grand ideas. It was a teaching moment about the nature of the country, its greatness, how to continue it, from where we derive our freedom, the kind of thing that the American people are not told often enough. It was uplifting. It was optimistic, and it was inspiring. And, for that reason, whether it gets him elected or not, it was a great speech for people to hear, and to have it be talked about. Travis, thanks for the call.

Last night on Charlie Rose, Mark Halperin, TIME Magazine’s senior political analyst, was one of the guests. Charlie Rose said, ‘Mark, clearly the evangelical vote was sliding to Huckabee. Will this speech stop it somehow because they’ll say, ‘Well, you know, I don’t understand necessarily more about his Mormonism, but I do know that he believes in these things that I believe in’?’

HALPERIN: Rush Limbaugh has spoken favorably of the speech, other religious conservatives have. I think that’s enough to be in the game with people. Are there people who want to vote for him in Iowa because he’s a Mormon, were there before the speech? Yes. Are there now? Yes. But I think he did as we say what he had to do to be in the game, but to show them his heart, not to get them to say, ‘My preference as a Mormon is president,’ but to say, ‘This is a man of faith and a man I’m comfortable with.’

RUSH: Yeah, also, in addition to this, there are a number of people — Charles Krauthammer is one of those, ‘It’s just a crying shame he had to make this speech.’ And Krauthammer lays it off on Huckabee. Krauthammer says that Huckabee is running a pretty effective ad up in Iowa that says, ‘I have no problem talking about my faith, Christian,’ whatever, I forget the exact text of the ad, calls it a good ad, but he says Huckabee is behind this, not totally, but the final straw requiring Romney to make the speech, and he was just unhappy. Krauthammer says it’s just a shame that the climate in this country has gotten to the point that that speech was even necessary. Here’s a passage from the speech yesterday, and this passage has the libs literally up in arms.

ROMNEY: In John Adams’ words: ‘We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion… Our constitution was made for a moral and religious people. Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom. Freedom opens the windows of the soul so that man can discover his most profound beliefs and commune with God. Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone.’

RUSH: Now, that passage he’s quoting John Adams. Listen to Sally Quinn on the Charlie Rose Show last night when asked about this passage.

QUINN: I was absolutely stunned by how exclusive it was. I expected him to be much more inclusive. The line that I was just absolutely shocked by was when he said, ‘freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom.’ And then went on to say, ‘freedom and religion endure together or perish alone.’ And that sounded to me like he was basically recommending a theocracy, and it sounded as though he was excluding anybody who might be a doubter, an agnostic, an atheist —

RUSH: Stop the tape. This is why sometimes I’m forced to say liberals just don’t have religion. He was quoting one of the Founders! The whole speech, she has missed the point. The whole speech was about the founding of the country and how important elements were in having it happen and, furthermore, keeping it together, the traditions, the institutions that have made this country great, as I love to say over and over again. And all she can focus on is the PC aspect. ‘It was so exclusive, I expected it to be far more inclusive. I thought he was excluding anybody who might be a doubter, an agnostic, an atheist, a free thinker, even a seeker,’ she says. Do these people have not one original thought? There must be one liberal who has an original thought, and they all pick up on it, and they all start echoing it. But he’s quoting John Adams, for crying out loud. I don’t know, Sally Quinn may not know who he is. Sure she knows; she’s gotta know who he is. He was talking about the founding of the country and she thinks it’s dangerous, a theocracy. They are scared to death of any religious people, folks, not just Mormons.

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I want to go back to some of the lib reaction to a passage in Mitt Romney’s speech yesterday. It just has the libs up in arms. In fact, let’s go back and, Ed, grab sound bite five. We’ll just start at the top here because this is worth hearing again. This is Romney from the speech yesterday in College Station, Texas, and he is quoting one of the founders, John Adams.

ROMNEY: In John Adams’ words: ‘We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion… Our constitution was made for a moral and religious people. Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom. Freedom opens the windows of the soul so that man can discover his most profound beliefs and commune with God. Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone.’

RUSH: That last line — well, not just that, but the ‘freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom,’ that just got a lot of libs today turned upside down. Here Sally Quinn, wife of Ben Bradley, social doyenne, ex-social doyenne since there’s not much social going on in Washington, of Washington, DC.

QUINN: I was absolutely stunned by how exclusive it was. I expected him to be much more inclusive. The line that I was just absolutely shocked by was when he said, ‘freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom.’ And then went on to say, ‘freedom and religion endure together or perish alone.’ And that sounded, to me, like he was basically recommending a theocracy, and it sounded as though he was excluding anybody who might be a doubter, an agnostic, an atheist, a free thinker, even a seeker. It was as though he were saying, you know, if you believe in God, then that’s the American way. And it seemed to me that it was exactly the opposite, the antithesis of the American way, which is we are all Americans, and whether we are believers or not, I include everyone.

RUSH: Sally, it’s embarrassing how profound your ignorance on the founding of this country is, and the rest of you libs who might have this paranoid belief, ‘He was leaving out the atheists, and he was leaving out the agnostics. It was exclusive.’ He was encapsulating what the Founding Fathers said in the Declaration of Independence. They pointed to natural law and the Creator. I am convinced these liberals have no more understanding of the founding of this country and the tradition behind it than people who have never been born here or live here. I don’t think they have the slightest — (interruption) well, then if they do, then they just can’t stand it, whatever it is, either they don’t know or they’ve forgotten, or they do know and they can’t stand it. Whatever they’re doing, they want to change it. They don’t like it.

When you get right down to the bottom line, what really grates on them is that our country was founded on the belief in God, and natural law does not compel every future citizen to believe in God. But it does mean that for our society to survive, the founding principles must be embraced by most of us, otherwise what do we have here? Who are we? What is this place? It will cease to be America. It is why I ask the question over and over again, have you ever stopped to wonder why, in the course of all human history, nations, civilizations, thousands of years before we came into existence, we dwarf them in every which way for good? Economics, technological advancement, freedom, civil rights, human dignity, all of these things, quality of life, standard of living. How did it happen? It is not an accident. It is not a coincidence. It’s directly traceable to our founding. What he was talking about yesterday, he was encapsulating what the Founding Fathers said in the Declaration of Independence. If we lose this tradition, if we lose the roots to our founding, we are not going to be the America that we are today, that we’ve always been.

I’m really frightened that that’s what some libs want to do, is destroy and eliminate, as best they can. The court system is their primary route, because they’re insulated from elections there, to totally destroy the link to the roots that make this country what it is. Because there is a genuine fear, I said it yesterday, I’m going to say it again, because I firmly believe it. I think in a lot of liberals, a lot of leftists, there is a genuine fear of people who have faith in God. Liberals want people to have faith in them and their institutions, which is government, and they are frightened by the fact that people who have faith in something larger than themselves that can’t be controlled, which is what liberalism must do in order to thrive. It must control people. Nobody is required to believe in God, but it does mean that for our society to survive, I’m going to say this again, the founding principles must be embraced by most of us, otherwise, who are we? If you accept the founding had a religious aspect, then you also have to accept what comes with it. If you don’t want to accept that, then you want to deny. How about that? You’re a founding denier. Yeah, those of us that don’t buy the global warming hoax, we’re called global warming deniers. Well, those of you who want to destroy or deny the truth about the founding of this nation are founding deniers.

So there’s dissent in this country, there are different views, but most of us believe in God, and most of us believe in natural law. Most of us do. Look at the Passion of the Christ. Look how well that did and how inflamed the liberals were over it, particularly out in Hollywood? That is the American tradition. It is our founding. That most of us believe in God and natural law. Now, I am sorry to report this to Sally Quinn and even Christopher Hitchens and others, but our country was not founded by atheists. Our country was not founded by agnostics. Our country was not founded by deists. Our country was founded by religious people. You have to go way, way, way out of line to deny it. You can’t read any of George Washington’s speeches, first Thanksgiving proclamation, farewell address, the inaugural, everything. The first Thanksgiving was thanks to God. We tell the story each year here. Atheists had nothing to do with founding this country, dissenters, yes, but not atheists. It’s called the Judeo-Christian ethic, and that Judeo-Christian ethic and principles undergird the society. They provide the foundation, the building blocks from which this great nation rose. There is no other answer for this, and this is precisely why our society is so tolerant. There was nothing intolerant in Mitt Romney’s speech. But they are scared to death of it, nonetheless. They just don’t get it.

Here, listen to Jon Meacham. Jon Meacham is Newsweek editor. MSNBC Live yesterday afternoon, Norah O’Donnell said, ‘What do you make of the phrase, when he said freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom?’

MEACHAM: He’s half right. The second part is true. The first part is not. And I’m curious about that, since you focused on it, it literally made me start when I — when I saw it. Freedom doesn’t require religion. As an empirical matter, in the United States, the fight for freedom has been informed by American religion. That is a fact, but the idea that somehow or another you have to have religion in order to have human freedom is actually not true, I think.

RUSH: Yeah, okay, the editor at Newsweek here is now a qualified expert to tell us that John Adams was full of it, one of our founders. Yes, exactly right. The arrogance and the condescension, the elitism. (Doing Meacham impression) ‘Adams, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. I’m the editor of Newsweek. I know what I’m talking about. Yeah, John Adams, who the hell was he? He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.’

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So you have the Sally Quinns of the world and all these people, the Jon Meachams, the expert at Newsweek who is able to proclaim that John Adams is half right. Why should we listen to Adams, when we have Jon Meacham at Newsweek? These same people, my friends, are the people that gave us this willowy phrase, ‘the Constitution is a living and breathing document.’ The founding of liberalism is based on moral relativism. The main threat to that view, is the originalist view of our nation and the Constitution. So the founding and the original intent of the Constitution are considered threats to liberalism, by liberals, and they have to be dealt with. So, ‘Well, the Constitution is a living, breathing document. It must change and adapt with the evolving mores of our corrupted, perverted society on which we will make no judgment,’ say the liberals, and then the Founding Fathers have no clue. Well, they were half right, until the editor of Newsweek comes along and sets it straight on this. You know, I find it always useful to go back and read the words of former communists, because like it or not, leftists in this country are far more comfortable with the lines from Karl Marx than they are with some of the lines in the Constitution of the United States of America, or the Declaration of Independence. They think the Constitution and The Declaration of Independence, like Romney’s speech, are exclusionary, not inclusive, not tolerant enough.